This is absurd, simply absurd and increasingly disgusting: a pattern emerges of repeated cover-ups of child sex abuse. The abuse could happen in any structure, but the cover-ups are the real scandal. Over and over again the same coverup--and then those covering up claim that they are actually victims!
The Vatican heatedly defended Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday, claiming accusations that he helped cover up the actions of pedophile priests are part of an anti-Catholic "hate" campaign targeting the pope for his opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage.
Really? This is all made up by those Godless liberals to tear down institutions they oppose? How does that work?
How can support for abortion and same sex marriage explain this case in in Alaska?
...345 cases of molestation in Alaska by 28 perpetrators who came from at least four different countries.
This concentration of abuses is orders of magnitude greater than Catholic sex-abuse cases in other parts of the United States. ...
Or this Wisconsin case:
They were deaf, but they were not silent. For decades, a group of men who were sexually abused as children by the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy at a school for the deaf in Wisconsin reported to every type of official they could think of that he was a danger, according to the victims and church documents.
They told other priests. They told three archbishops of Milwaukee. They told two police departments and the district attorney. They used sign language, written affidavits and graphic gestures to show what exactly Father Murphy had done to them. But their reports fell on the deaf ears of hearing people.
This week, they learned that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, received letters about Father Murphy in 1996 from Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland of Milwaukee, who said that the deaf community needed “a healing response from the Church.” The Vatican sat on the case, then equivocated, and when Father Murphy died in 1998, he died a priest.
Or this one:
A Catholic priest who has been criminally charged with sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl in Minnesota six years ago is still working in his home diocese in India despite warnings to the Vatican from an American bishop that the priest continued to pose a risk to children, according to church documents made public on Monday.
The documents show that the American bishop warned the Vatican that the priest was accused of molesting two teenage girls whose trust he gained by promising to discuss their interest in becoming nuns.
Over and over and over again: the same stories, just with different names, different faces, and different versions of the agony. All over the world.
And other forms of corruption are also coming out.
And its the fault of people who support reproductive rights and same sex marriage?
Fortunately some Catholics are grappling with this directly.
Writing in the Boston Globe, James Carroll provides a history lesson:
POPE BENEDICT XVI has denounced the predator priests with due severity, but he cannot credibly chastise their enabler bishops because he has been one of them. The whole Catholic Church seems to be in crisis, but what is really at stake here is the collapse not of Catholicism, but of Catholic fundamentalism....
In effect, the pope replaced Jesus Christ as the face of the church, and the more the pontiff was attacked, the more papal loyalty defined the core Catholic value. These developments occurred for understandable human reasons, but they resulted in a grave distortion of the Gospel, which lifts up the face of Jesus as central and defines church authority by service, not power.
Dominican Thomas Doyle reviews where we are
...What is urgent and destructive has been the way the Church leadership, from the papacy on down to local bishops, have responded. “For the good of the Church” victims have been ignored, silenced and rebuffed, and criminal offenders have been quietly sent off to new assignments, often to offend again. “For the good of the Church” those harmed by the clergy have been led to cooperate in their own exploitation, convinced by their trusted leaders that the institution’s image and the exalted status of the priests is of greater value than healing or justice. Though other institutions, public and private, religious and secular, have all experienced sexual abuse and other forms of internal corruption, the Catholic Church is unique. It has used its immense spiritual power and its absolute authority to control victims to the extent of persuading them to be part of their own cover-up.
.... There is really only one vital question: why is this system and the men who sustain it more important than the emotional, physical and spiritual welfare of a single, innocent child?
And Fr James Martin, SJ in the HuffPo makes his diagnosis:
What needs to die is a clerical culture that long fostered power, privilege and secrecy. What needs to die is an attitude that had placed concern for a priest's reputation above that of a child's welfare. What needs to die is mindset in which investigations of dissident theologians and American Catholic sisters were more swiftly prosecuted than investigations of abusive priests. What needs to die is, in a word, a certain pride. All of this needs to be surrendered.
Institutions are human. They are corruptible. It's not the crime per se. Abusers are indeed everywhere. It's the coverup, and misplaced values that placed more weight on reputation than on protecting the young and the weak.
Not only was the Holocaust and Christian martyrdom invoked. There was the recent claim by Bill Donohue and others, that abusing a 13 year old boy isn't child abuse, it's just "typical homosexuality". Writing in the HuffPo, Scott Janssen reels in disgust:
Finally--and easily the most grotesque argument you have made--you claim the sexual abuse scandal going on within the Catholic Church isn't a matter of pedophilia but instead homosexuality. You argue that most of the victims have been "post-pubescent," which you use to imply the scandal isn't a grown priest violating a child: it's two men having gay sex. However, when asked what you define as "post-pubescent," you stated the age range to be between 12 and 13 years.
I have another question for you, Donohue: if the priest had been "having sex" with a 13 year old girl, would it be "sex" instead of abuse because she's "post-pubescent"? Something tells me the vast majority of Americans wouldn't agree with that argument, but most importantly, neither would the police department of any state in America. It's rape, pure and simple. The fact you would be desperate enough to even make such an argument speaks volumes.
Do these people even hear themselves? Can you imagine anything more revolting than Donohue justifying abuse, in order to attack and blame Teh Gay?
Look, I grew up Roman Catholic (nothing like a Catholic education to make an atheist!) But I know that confession is good for the soul. I know my mother always respected it when I "fessed up". Our children also learned to admit wrong, not to lie. Admit the wrong, make amends to fix it. Do penance. But denying what is plain before us all insults the intelligence of the laity and the general public. It insults the many, many fine men in the priesthood who labor to live within their vows and do good in the world. It invokes not a the authority of magisterium, but instead suggests a tinpot dictatorship, spinning frantic lies like the official claims of massive agricultural outputs in starving North Korea.
Thomas Doyleconcludes
The sexual abuse scandal may not be the only reason but it certainly is the dominant reason for the diminishing role and influence of institutional Catholicism. The Church will survive but in the long run it won’t be in the form of a gilded monarchy with its stratified vision of humankind. In all likelihood it will be the Church as community and hopefully this Church will hold as its most important members those who are most vulnerable, most rejected and most in need…..not of control, but of love.
But until that happens, until honesty and integrity are restored, there will be more hideous words, and more horrors to come.
Update: And here it comes. From the WaPo
The future Pope Benedict XVI resisted pleas to defrock a California priest with a record of sexually molesting children, citing concerns including "the good of the universal church," according to a 1985 letter bearing his signature.
Long article. Read it. Discussion at Kossack RandySF's diary.
Cross posted at Street Prophets